Well, I meant that drafted mathematicians would be less likely to cooperate and get posted to an NSA-affiliated job, so even using the draft wouldn’t be that effective a “vacuum”.
I still have to use that phrase. Otherwise, I’ll get questions like “Oh, do you carry a gun?” or “Can you break into my daughter’s computer so I can see who she’s been chatting with?” <sigh> No to both. They hear “bank” and “security” and immediately conjure up an armed guard. Or they think I’m some sort of cracker with loose ethics.
Well, smarter and better-organized maybe… 
Since I know for a fact that NSA regulations prevent F.U. Shakespeare from saying this, I’ll say it on his behalf:
BWA-HA-HA-HAAA!
Does he suggest they knew it was U.S. before the attack?
Sure, that’s exactly what we’d expect you to say. 
Just for the record, I wasn’t mentioning the Liberty sinking because I wanted more information on the incident; I was mentioning it because the assertions are, as I said, wildly inflammatory and hard to accept, and that in consequence one may want to take the book’s other material with a grain of salt. Aside from these accusations, the book seems to be well-researched and has been very informative, so far at least, but I thought it was worthwhile to mention for the context.
(Yes, c’plant, that’s what the author is suggesting. See this site for followup debate. If anyone’s interested in the subject, it should go to a new thread; I wasn’t trying at all to hijack this one, and this is the last time I’ll bring it up here. Sorry for the distraction.)
Regulations my ass. He’s too busy repositioning one of the NSA satellites over my location.
And what’s with all the government vans in the parking lot all of a sudden like?
Just as a data point, one of my friends from high school went on to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics and has subsequently spent his career working for a government contracting firm in California. The firm is involved in communications, and a great deal of what he does (perhaps all) is classified, but it would be pure speculation to suggest that his firm is doing contract work for NSA or some other national defense agency.
Well, it used to be much less likely to generate follow-up questions since computers weren’t nearly as ubiquitous as they are now. Nowadays it’s just seen as being evasive, since everybody works with computers. There was a time in the mid-90s, though, when it really wasn’t a very good response since immediately the other person would ask for more information.
Almost all mathematicians in industry do “classified” work, whether it has anything to do with defense or not. If a company thinks they need to pull in the big guns of rationality they’ll probably find the results worth protecting.
Slight nitpick: the term “classified” means that the information is related to national defense by definition. Civilian, non-government related, work may be confidential but it cannot be “classified”.
Government, okay. National defense, I’m not certain. I had a friend who helped maintain servers for NIH, and his work was “classified”.
Besides, there’s still a lot of work in national defense without coming near the NSA.
Actually I should have said national security.
If his work at NIH is classified then it has been done so under the National Security Act. I don’t recall when the act was passed.